I will never forget where I was on that day. It was entirely
unexpected. We had spent the day with my grandmother. We
got the news at her house about five o'clock on the radio.
I had no idea of the scope or intensity of that war and all
the news we got was in the paper or heard on the radio.

It was our duty to write all the soldiers that we knew and
to send them various items that they might need. During
the war years there were a lot of shortages such as sugar,
coffee, material for shoes, coffee and meat. We had plenty
of dairy items and chickens and meat because my Dad was
a farmer.

Like most girls in that era, by the time I was sixteen, I
had a boyfriend overseas. He was a machine gunner in the
infantry in Germany. Not a good life expectancy but he
lived through it and didn't even get sea sick coming back on
a troop ship.

His most horrifying memories were of the concentration camp
they liberated and of having to shoot the twelve year old
boys that Hitler threw in at the last of the war. His nightmares are why I hate war with such a passion. We were
married as soon as I was eighteen which was far too soon.
I was not mature enough to cope with marriage.

We have a daughter in common and I certainly bear him no
ill will.

P.S. There was a funny effort at conservation that you
probably don't know about. Feedsacks were printed so that
they could be used for making clothing after you fed your
animals. My mother couldn't get sheets and she made them out of 4 feedsacks sewn together. We had pajamas and dresses made out of them too. It was quite a coup to get
four alike so you could make a dress or a sheet. They
had to be ripped apart and sewed up on an old treadle sewing
machine.